Nicholas Negroponte

The founder of the MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte pushed the edge of the information revolution as an inventor, thinker and angel investor. He's the driving force behind One Laptop per Child, building computers for children in the developing world.

Why you should listen

A pioneer in the field of computer-aided design, Negroponte founded (and was the first director of) MIT's Media Lab, which helped drive the multimedia revolution and now houses more than 500 researchers and staff across a broad range of disciplines. An original investor in Wired (and the magazine's "patron saint"), for five years he penned a column exploring the frontiers of technology -- ideas that he expanded into his 1995 best-selling book Being Digital. An angel investor extraordinaire, he's funded more than 40 startups, and served on the boards of companies such as Motorola and Ambient Devices.

But his latest effort, the One Laptop per Child project, may prove his most ambitious. The organization is designing, manufacturing and distributing low-cost, wireless Internet-enabled computers costing roughly $100 and aimed at children. Negroponte hopes to put millions of these devices in the hands of children in the developing world.

What others say

“If Nicholas Negroponte can achieve his ambition of distributing $100 laptops to the world's disadvantaged children, he will help redefine philanthropy and see his name added to a list alongside the likes of Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller.” — Technology Review

More news and ideas from Nicholas Negroponte

Over the past 10 years, TED Talks videos have tracked our ever-tighter relationship with technology — including the tools we use to access it, our interfaces … from keyboards and mice to magic wands and sensory vests. For our guide to this evolving field, we start with MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte’s talk from […]

“The Next Chapter” is already fascinating — full of great characters, plot twists and, hopefully, it’s all leading toward a happy ending. Today, we kicked off TED2014 — our 30th-anniversary conference — which will chew on this theme, offering intriguing ideas on where we are going next. So what happened in day one? Below, some highlights. […]

Today, Negroponte is back to open TED, to reflect on predictions he’s made in the past and to spin some new ones for the future. His point is that when someone tells you that you are “dead wrong,” that you just might be onto something. Negroponte takes us on a lightning-paced tour of his career, […]